If you can please respond

@chanalexxa I know I felt real feelings for a friend the other day but I don’t feel anything unless I’m around him… the rest of this is so helpful thank you so much. But I explained the friend thing to my ex and he was like that sounds like real feelings and you need to figure it out, but I think nothing of him when I’m not around him so it’s just confusing :/

@bsquiggled It is hard to deal with OCD & it is hard to have a partner without OCD to understand. - For me, the happier I am the worst my thoughts are. - If you do have feelings for someone else - you can explore those feelings without feeling guilty since you are not in a relationship. - My advice would be to either tell this friend how you feel & explore it if it is mutual and that is what you want. Or limit your in person contact for the time being. - If you are not already seeing a therapist on here, i would highly recommend it if you are able !

@chanalexxa I really don’t want to explore it. I don’t want the feelings to exist at all and idk if it qualifies as a real crush or not if I don’t feel anything when I’m not around him and only do when he’s like giving me attention? I’m so stuck 😩

@bsquiggled I am in school to be a counselor but am not licensed yet so please take this with a grain of salt but to me this sounds like you are scared of messing up / hurting your ex you have so much fear about the what ifs. your brain is in a negative loop! focus on yourself over all and if it is meant to be it will be !!

@bsquiggled Few things—first I can say I relate a lot to worrying extensively about who I am attracted to and being worried about developing feelings for people when there is only one person who I am truly interested in (and also by the way I also relate to really complicated situations/long periods of silence with someone you have feelings for). The reality is, it is normal to find people attractive, and that doesn’t necessity go away just because you love one particular person. I want to be careful not to give you reassurance here but I also think it’s important to say that it is entirely possible for OCD to convince you that you feel things you really don’t. You can have feelings that feel unbearably real that end up being not. But maybe most importantly, I don’t think it really matters if these feelings you think you have for other people are real or not, and I think it would be good for you to accept uncertainty around this instead of trying to analyze what you are feeling (which is a compulsion). at the heart of this, you talk about wanting to be with the boy you love. that seems like the truth you should focus on. It is scary and really hard, but you have to accept uncertainty about the fears you have, and manage compulsions. That means not analyzing how you feel about other guys, not tracking who you find attractive, not trying to figure out if you find other guys attractive, not trying to figure out if you like someone or not, not analyzing how you interact with other guys, etc. Accept that maybe you do have feelings for someone else, maybe you don’t. Again, I know this is awfully difficult, but I would really encourage you to give it a shot. Writing this is also a good reminder for myself to do the same things.

@username0192837456 Thank you. You have a lot of good points, I just can’t accept it. I talked with my ex about it and he was like yea, sounds like you have feelings for him and we can’t get back together unless you get yourself sorted out. So the whole maybe/maybe not thing is terrorizing me from the inside out. I’m genuinely like, restless and can’t stop the panic when I think about how I felt that night. I don’t even crush on or think about him outside of those couple of nights I had that I felt for him (except for a lot of intrusive comparisons) but my main worry is I’ll get back together with my ex and I’ll feel something for that friend if I see him again. And that’s not a “what if” question, it just genuinely would happen and idk what to do about it :((